«Let them live free and happy!»

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

Over these past few months, they have often hit the headlines. Sadly, because of awful, inhuman, even dramatic situations. I am talking about children, who have been the focus of media attention because of the violence they suffer. There are children mistreated by their teachers in kindergartens, shoved and cornered. There are girls abused by those adults whom they should trust. There is Aylan, three years old, escaped from war, lying face down, in sea foam, on the beach of Bodrum in Turkey. Others die under the bombs of fratricidal wars like in Aleppo. There are unaccompanied minors who keep reaching the shores of Italy, inexperienced children who are held confined in refugee camps. The cries of Mexican children separated from their parents and locked in steel cages at the Texan border have outraged the public opinion. An then the child brides in Asia, who are the fruit of a tribal heritage and pseudo-religious fanaticism. And those children who do not go to school as they are nomads or forced into begging, or those who work in the mines or take up a rifle... It is an infinite list that is not meant to instill sadness or arouse pietism. They…